


How To (Not) Matchmake Your Friends

by Wildcard



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Cracky, F/M, Friendship, Funny, High School AU, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 11:14:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4346450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wildcard/pseuds/Wildcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Orianna's crushing on Ezreal. Hard. Ezreal, however, doesn't seem to have noticed. </p><p>Unfortunately for Orianna, Talon decides to help her do something about it. Highschool AU setting, mostly humor and a little friendship fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a gift for askwinterorianna on tumblr! Based off a highschool AU setting we like to talk about where Orianna and Talon are best friends.

Talon still doesn’t know why a robot brings lunch to school, let alone two lunches, but thanks to Orianna’s generosity, he always has a meal guaranteed per school day. She even lets him come over on the weekends sometimes and feeds him then, though Talon is careful not to swing by too often and wear out his welcome. 

Her father is strangely okay with Talon; he peers in the living room at Talon and Orianna when they’re seated on the couch and watching movies but the look in his eyes is soft and happy almost. Talon’s not used to people being happy to see him and even less used to them being happy that he’s friends with their children but the man’s clearly deranged so it’s better to keep him happy anyway. At least it’s the harmless kind of crazy, the kind that makes the man try to wrap up Orianna against the winter elements even though she’s a robot and definitely won’t catch a cold. Talon’s fairly sure it’s contagious; he’s offered Orianna his hoodie more than once in autumn when a sudden shift in temperature caught them unawares and he knows she doesn’t feel the cold.

It’s just hard to remember that sometimes, especially if she’s not looking at her. She sounds mechanical, yeah, but so does Viktor and he’s still human no matter how much he wishes otherwise. Orianna’s not a threat to him so when they talk, when he walks her home from school, he looks at everything except her. And then the wind picks up and he tugs off his hoodie because she’s smaller and thinner and she’ll feel the cold more – and it’s only once he’s got it on her, once he’s looking down at the synthetic skin of her face and the puzzled glow of her eyes, that he remembers that she’s not human and realizes he’s the only one who’s shivering.

The problem is, he needs to do something real for her. 

There’s a word for a creature that comes when called and accepts food without giving anything in return. That word is pet.

What do you give a girl who needs nothing but maintenance?

He tries oil first, stealing it from an auto mechanic shop and presenting her with it. 

“Here,” he says, and shoves the can at her along with a mug that he’s tied to the can’s handle with a ribbon. He filched the mug from a coffee shop so it’s good quality too, nice heavy porcelain without a single nick.

Orianna doesn’t blink. She never blinks. She just takes it and looks up at him, the slight tilt of her head to a side a silent query.

“It’s for you. Because you bring me food all the time.” His explanation only grows more awkward as he continues, “You can drink the oil like coffee.”

“I don’t drink oil, Talon,” she tells him, her mouth curving into that oddly-jointed smile. “It goes between my joints.”

“…So I got you body cream?” That was still good, right? It wasn’t as good as getting her a drink but it still counted as a useful gift.

Gears whir as she considers that, then graces him with a nod.

“Yes,” she says, but she’s no longer looking at him. She’s looking past him and the whir of her clockwork seems a little faster as if her processors are taking up more energy.

Talon rolls his shoulders back, pretending to just be shifting his weight and glances in the same direction she’s facing. There’s nothing there but Ezreal, half inside his locker as if he’s going to go exploring it next. Something about Ezreal always makes Orianna’s clockwork heart tick faster but Talon doesn’t understand why. He’s blond and cute enough, yeah, but shouldn’t Orianna be hot for a microwave or something?

(Talon never knew Orianna before her death. He doesn’t understand a love that lingers even when life is gone.)

….Still. At least that’s something Talon can get for her.

_ii._  


Talon’s never courted anyone personally but he’s seen the gang members that hang around his part of town flirt with each other. That night, as he hangs out on top of a wall and watches, he pays especial attention to the interactions between the boys and the girls.

Draven, confident, swaggering bastard that he is, smacks one of the girls on the ass and tells her, “Eyyyy, sexy, my brother’s looking bored. Go give him some sugar.”

The girl giggles but complies, strutting over to Darius to try to charm him. While she’s wholly unsuccessful, at least it’s given Talon an idea of what to do. Simply ordering Ezreal to kiss Orianna would surely be the fastest way to get the two of them together.  
  
\------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day at the lunchroom, Talon spots Ezreal standing alone by the water fountain. That’s as good a time as any.

“Wait here,” he tells Orianna, getting up from the bench they were at to quickly make his way over to Ezreal. The blond boy gives him a slightly contemptuous look but Talon’s used to that.

“Hey, sexy,” he starts, doing his best to imitate Draven’s confidence. 

Ezreal’s eyes grow wider than golf balls but Talon manfully ignores that and continues determinedly.

“Go over there and give my friend some sugar.” He gestures behind him in the rough direction where Orianna should be seated, then realizes he forgot a key component to the ritual.

The smack to Ezreal’s ass is hard, loud and makes Ezreal jump with a surprisingly high-pitched yelp. Seconds later, Orianna is completely forgotten as Talon tears through the cafeteria, running away from the now-enraged teenager who is firing Mystic Shot after Mystic Shot at him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If at first you don't succeed, try, try again?

Fine. So imitating gangsters didn’t work. Talon should’ve known that anyone who hangs out with Swain has no idea how romance works – after all, Swain gave LeBlanc a dead crow the other day and she actually seemed happy with it!

Talon briefly considers giving Ezreal a dead bird and saying it’s from Orianna and then discards that idea. If nothing else, Orianna would give him a mechanical bird.

Since live observations have failed him, he turns to the movies. The internet helpfully provides him with a list of the greatest love stories of all time and Talon finds them online. He settles down with a notepad, a pen and a bottle of water to research how courtship should go.

Fifteen love stories later, Talon is convinced that the human race deserves to go extinct.

Apart from anything else, people keep dying in the end! Romeo. Jack. Or they separate forever. Fuck that noise. He is not going to have Ezreal die and then Orianna pine over him forever.

Still, even if most of it was stupid, it did give him one idea…

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

“Stand in here,” he instructs Orianna, gesturing at the cupboard.

The Ball goes into the cupboard, checking it out like a good pet, then whizzes back to hover over her head as she turns to ask Talon, “Why?”

“…It’s for a surprise.” He steps into the cupboard himself, then steps out again. “See? Nothing weird about it. Just stand in there and wait.”

“Am I going to have to jump out at someone?” Orianna asks, remembering certain ‘surprises’ of Talon that involved him jumping out of things and then stabbing people. She doesn’t have any knives but hitting them in the face with the Ball will no doubt have the same effect.

“No! No, don’t jump out. Just stand there and wait.”

Orianna steps into the closet and Talon closes one of the doors, leaving her hidden from sight. From behind the wood, he hears the muffled complaint:

“The Ball is impatient.”

Ignoring that, he waits patiently for his prey to come along. As part of his prep work, he’s memorized Ezreal’s schedule and just about now, Ezreal should be wandering along from art class to Eng—there he is!

“Ezreal!” Talon calles out. 

The defensive pose that the blond strikes immediately, turning so his ass is against the wall, is entirely unnecessary in Talon’s opinion. He’d only smacked Ezreal’s ass once and it had been part of a ploy to make him date Orianna! It isn’t as if he made a habit of it or anything. 

“What do you want, Talon?” Ezreal demands suspiciously.

Talon points at the closet. 

“There’s a surprise for you in there.”

Ezreal stares at him. Talon stares back expectantly.

Once Ezreal finally realizes that Talon wasn’t going to elaborate further, he asks, “What kind of surprise?”

“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.” Talon gestures at the cupboard encouragingly. “Go look.”

“I’m not going to go look in a cupboard just because you tell me to,” Ezreal says flatly, still keeping his back against to the wall.

“…Fine. The surprise is that I glued Orianna’s feet to the inside of the cupboard.”

“WHAT?!” Orianna and Ezreal both blurt in unison. Ezreal Arcane Shifts over to the cupboard immediately, looking inside to see that Orianna is indeed there. Before he can offer to help her, Talon shoves hard to force Ezreal inside the closet, then slams the door on him. The magic-resist cloaks he’s stapled to the door should keep Ezreal from Arcane Shifting out! And the heavy padlock he clasps on the handles will hopefully stop anyone else from letting them out as well.

There. He’s now locked them together in a small, confined space. According to his research, this will result in bickering and then kissing, followed by dating.

Satisfied with himself, Talon dusts his hands off and walks off.

If he’d just waited five minutes and seen how easily the Ball smashed through the wood of the door, he would have been far less smug. 

Robots can’t be held captive within wooden walls.


	3. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orianna's a robot but she understands romance better than Talon does.

“We need to talk,” Orianna says and Talon feels a momentary twinge of panic because thanks to the love stories he watched, he now knows that it’s never good when people say that.

“You can’t break up with me,” he points out preemptively, “We aren’t together.”

“…So strange, your thoughts.” She taps the side of his head with her cold fingers and does a little bounce in place. There’s some fancy ballet name for it, Talon’s sure, but his attention is on the glow of her eyes.

“What you are doing with Ezreal is not a fun game.” Her head tilts back, gears clicking into place, and the Ball whirrs threateningly above her head. “Stop.”

“I’m trying to help you.” Doesn’t she get that? “You want him and I want you to have what you want.”

Orianna’s body turns but her head stays fixed, eyes locked onto Talon’s with a laptop’s unblinking glare.

“Yes. I know what makes you tick.” Another tap of her fingers and she smoothes away a flyaway strand of hair from Talon’s face. “Wind me up.”

His arms reach around her and he turns the giant key in her back. It’s almost like a hug for a few seconds before he drops his arms to his side again.

“I know what makes him tick,” Orianna continues and the Ball expands its shield around her, as if it can protect her from the words she’s speaking. “It is not me.”

She pirouettes in place and the outstretched arch of her arm is flawless. Light glances off the tips of her fingers and shines in the direction of Lux.

“His heart ticks for her.”

Her pirouette turns into some other fancy move that Talon can’t name but can admire for the grace of it. All the while, her gaze has not moved from his face.

“He does not want a weapon.” Her mechanical giggle sounds, high and shrill, but Talon doesn’t wince. “He has his gauntlet.”

Did Corin teach (program, the word is programmed, Orianna was programmed not taught but it’s hard for Talon to remember he needs to talk about her differently) her about black humor? Or had she picked up that up from Talon?

He knows she can feel the heat of his (human, frail) flesh when he touches her, even if she doesn’t receive the same comfort from it that a human would, so he mimics her earlier gesture and pushes imaginary hair away from her pristine cheek.

“So you want me to steal the gauntlet?” He asks, not entirely joking.

“No,” she says and does not smile. “I want you to stop.”


End file.
